


suspension & metamorphoses

by pipsqueakparker (lafbaeyette)



Category: Carry On Series - Rainbow Rowell
Genre: Carry On Tarot Collection, Emotions, Gen, M/M, Tarot, The Hanged Man - Freeform, Visiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-10
Updated: 2020-07-10
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:54:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25187515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lafbaeyette/pseuds/pipsqueakparker
Summary: “Did you see?” I’m still staring at the empty space next to our bed, where she stood just seconds ago.I knew what it was immediately, as soon as I felt the air grow colder. I half expected to see Baz’s mum again, though it wouldn’t make much sense. (She no longer had unfinished business, after all.)There was a woman standing there, but she looked nothing like Baz. She had lighter hair, it may have even been blonde in life, it was nearly transparent now. A slight build. She looked familiar, honestly, but I was still too groggy and muddled from sleep to make the connection at first.Until I did.---AKA, The One Inspired By The Hanged Man Tarot Card
Relationships: Tyrannus Basilton "Baz" Pitch/Simon Snow
Comments: 8
Kudos: 129
Collections: Carry_On_Tarot_Collection





	suspension & metamorphoses

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the Carry On Tarot event! I'm very into Tarot, so this was really exciting and fun to write. 
> 
> One of my cards was The Hanged Man. Rightside up, this card suggests ultimate surrender or sacrifice. It represents the feeling of being suspended in air, and those moments of uncertainty right before metamorphoses. 
> 
> I wrote this as a companion piece with my other tarot fic, [listen before i go](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25263937).
> 
> With this one, I wanted to explore the aftermath of ultimate sacrifice, and the metamorphoses that this card suggests follows such a feeling of suspension. (And I also tied in some elements from The Devil, especially it's meaning when upside down, which is a freedom of sorts, freedom from restraint, and breaking old habits.)

**SIMON**

“I-I think… that... ” I can hear my own voice shaking, but I don’t realize I’m _physically_ shaking until Baz wraps his arm around my shoulders to steady me.

“Simon, love, what—”

“Did you see?” I’m still staring at the empty space next to our bed, where she stood just seconds ago.

I knew what it was immediately, as soon as I felt the air grow colder. I half expected to see Baz’s mum again, though it wouldn’t make much sense. (She no longer had unfinished business, after all.)

There _was_ a woman standing there, but she looked nothing like Baz. She had lighter hair, it may have even been blonde in life, it was nearly transparent now. A slight build. She looked _familiar_ , honestly, but I was still too groggy and muddled from sleep to make the connection at first.

Until I _did_.

It had been years since I saw her face last, just a couple years after Baz’s mum’s Visiting, actually. Agatha had a photo of her. I had stared at that photo for hours, it felt like, as if staring at it would bring her back.

_“Mum.”_

Baz’s hands are on my shoulders, his lips on my temple. A shiver runs through me. I can still feel her cool kiss on my forehead.

“Baz…” I tilt my head up to look at him and I don’t realize I’m crying until I feel his thumb swipe beneath my eye and leave a moist track across the top of my cheek. He looks _concerned_ , and I have to laugh as I realize why. I just woke him up, shaking and crying, and now I’m laughing and leaning into his chest, and the tears are flowing more freely down my face.

I’ve got a strange rush of feelings squeezing and pushing each other about in my chest, my heart feels swollen and my throat feels tight, but I can’t stop laughing. Baz just rubs my back and I manage to tilt my head back enough to see the bewildered look on his face. It only sets me into a harder fit of laughter.

“Snow, what happened?” He finally asks me again, after I’ve calmed down to just the occasional burst of giggles.

“I… I just had a Visiting.”

“What?”

I just nod, I almost can’t believe it, but I know it happened. I know she was there, just as real as Baz’s mum had been twenty years ago when she came through the veil in our room at Watford.

“Was it…” He trails off, but I don’t need him to finish to realize where he’s going. I shake my head so vigorously I nearly make myself dizzy.

“No, no, no. I — Uhm, it was my mum.”

His eyes are wide when I look back up at him. Honestly, his expression probably matches mine when I first saw her. “Really?”

“Yeah.” My eyes sting again, my vision blurs as they well up. Fuck, I wish my emotions would settle just a bit. Baz just reaches up to wipe away another tear, which makes me smile. “She looked just like that photo Agatha had.”

“Did she say anything?”

I nod slowly, thinking back on it. “She said she loves me…”

But that wasn’t all, she said something else. Right before I opened my eyes, I remember the whisper that nudged me awake.

_“You’re so much stronger.”_

I don’t know what she could’ve been talking about…

Maybe since the last time? Had she tried to come through the veil twenty years ago? When Natasha Pitch did?

_“My rosebud boy.”_

I thought that was Baz… I remember Natasha Pitch saying it….

_Oh_.

It wasn’t Natasha Pitch. It was twenty years ago, but I still hear her voice clearly in my mind. I remember the other voice I heard that night, softer and sadder.

_That_ was _her._

She tried to come through twenty years ago, and she came back again. She found me this time, and she found a way to be here. To talk to me.

_“You’re so much stronger.”_

Than twenty years ago?

If you had asked me even ten years ago, I would have disagreed. I was still in therapy, still trying to get myself together and save my relationship with Baz. We were never as bad as we were on that trip to America, not after we got back from Watford.

We’ve been working ever since, trying to push ourselves past our own walls. Trying to help the other as well as helping ourselves.

_We_ are so much stronger now. We managed to do it, to come out of it all still holding onto each other. To make something so _good_ together, even after years of being pitted against one another. Being _used_.

We were treated like pawns in a war that never came, because we found our own way out.

Through sacrifice.

Through finding something we liked better than fighting. We stopped fighting with each other and started fighting _for_ each other, and now we’ve come out on the other side.

_I’ve_ come out on the other side.

I’ve lived twenty more years than I expected to.

I fell in love, I got _married._

I got to grow up with my best friends, and have a family, and a _life._

_“You’re so much stronger.”_

Maybe she’s right.

I look at Baz, who’s watching me with curiosity in his tired grey eyes. I close the space between us, pulling him closer by his shoulders as I kiss him nearly breathless in just a few moments.

I pull away, rest my forehead against his and whisper, “I think she’s proud of me. And she loves me.”

“Of course she does.” His voice is quiet and gentle in a way that it so rarely is, his words caressing me as softly as the thumb he’s still rubbing slowly across my cheek. “You’re ridiculously easy to love.”

I lean in and kiss him again.

_I hope you can find Natasha out there, Mum._

_Let her know._

_We’ve_ both _come out so much stronger._

**Author's Note:**

> come find me on tumblr: [@pipsqueakparker](pipsqueakparker.tumblr.com/)
> 
> if you ask nicely i might even give you a tarot reading


End file.
